By Bonnie Iwuoha
Nigerians are transfixed in shock, as events unfold in the macabre drama, playing out with respect to the office of Governor of Abia State. On Monday, June 27, 2016, a Federal High Court presided over by the Hon. Justice Okon Abang, purported to sack the sitting governor of Abia State on the grounds that he did not collect his tax receipts for 2011, 2012 and 2013 as and when due. Ikpeazu has been troubled not because he did not pay his tax for the years in question as and when due, which is impossible anyway as the taxes were deducted automatically from his salaries even before he got his pay, but because he did not demand for and collect his receipts for the automatically deducted taxes at the time they were being deducted and remitted.
The offence of Ikpeazu, according to the Federal High Court Judge, was that he waited until 2014 when he needed the tax receipts to apply for them. When officials of the Abia State Board of Internal Revenue acted on Ikpeazu’s request, therefore, they wrote the receipts for the three years in question on the same day and from the same booklet being used to write taxes for 2014. This same practice affects most civil and public servants in Nigeria, this writer inclusive. It is common knowledge that most of those who ask for their tax clearance certificates regularly are contractors and other businessmen and women, who require them for transactions.
For emphasis, Ikpeazu paid his taxes for 2011, 2012 and 2013 as and when due; it was the receipts for the taxes, which were written in 2014. On this ground, Justice Abang accused the governor of fraud and declared his seat vacant. This is unprecedented in the electoral history of Nigeria. In the annals of conspiracies to unlawfully and illegally rob an elected official of a victory he won at the polls in Nigeria.
When Barr. F.N. Nwosu, who scored five votes and Mr. Uchechukwu Samson Ogah, who scored 103 votes to Dr. Ikpeazu’s 487 votes at the PDP primaries in 2014 went to court on issues, bordering on tax documents, no one took the two cases seriously, for many reasons. First is that, it is impossible for Dr. Ikpeazu not to have paid his taxes for the years in question when he was an employee of the Abia State Passengers Integrated Manifest Scheme (ASPIMS) and later the Abia State Environmental Protection Agency (ASEPA), where he was GM and DGM, respectively. He was a civil/public servant for those years. As such, he was a PAYEE (Pay As You Earn Employee). PAYEEs are a special breed. They pay their taxes every month, as they receive their salaries, unlike many others who pay yearly; even that is not entirely accurate. It is more accurate to say that their taxes are deducted and remitted to the tax authorities automatically every month even before they see their salaries. In fact, they have no choice in the matter. They are not responsible for the assessment, deduction or remittance of their taxes. They only get to know what they pay as taxes when they receive their pay-slips and look at the column where it has been deducted.
When it comes to paying taxes, PAYEEs are the salt of the earth, as they are the most compliant. No PAYEE is given his receipts for taxes paid every month it is deducted, neither is it given at the end of every tax year, which ends on December 31 of each year. Some PAYEEs spend all their years in employment, which in the case of civil servants is 35 years, without once seeing their tax receipts.
Many never have need of it and never apply to the tax authorities for it. But if they need their tax receipts for any reason, they then apply to the tax authorities, who will call for their records from the appropriate agencies and from those records, compute and generate the figures, which will now be entered in a receipt and given to the PAYEE. The PAYEE has no role, contribution or input in this process. He has no input in the deduction and remittance of his taxes, so the records also do not have his input nor are they in his possession.
When the tax authorities call for the records and extract what they want from it in order to write his receipts, he is also not involved or even present. The role of a PAYEE in the matter of tax receipts are ONLY TWO: (1) to apply to tax authorities for it and (2) to collect it when it is ready. That is all Ikpeazu did in this instance and yet he is accused of forging a document he did not make.
The strategy of calling a dog a bad name in order to hang it in Nigeria is most unfortunate and regrettable. Once a public official is accused of forgery, no matter how unfounded and without merit the accusation is, people go to town, shouting “forgery, forgery, forgery;” a majority do not pause, take a breath and examine the allegations to determine its merit. Most citizens are just too anxious to believe the very worst for their elected officials and are not ready to afford them any benefit of doubts whatsoever. In this case, Ikpeazu is accused of making false entries in a document he was not even present when it was made. The Abia State Board of Internal Revenue (BIR), which wrote the receipts, signed, sealed it and delivered to Ikpeazu, deposed to an affidavit through its officials, explaining the process and procedures followed by them, but the honourable Judge ignored them.
Ikpeazu deserves high commendation for surrendering tax that accrued to government from private incomes he made before he joined government employment, contrary to most other people, who would have denied earning anything at all during the said period. Tax receipts are issued for a year and not in fractions of a year or monthly. A tax official, who is writing tax receipts does not know and would not care anyway what the receipts are being used for: Whether for purpose of elections, Land Registry transactions, or just for the mere records of the tax payer, etc; he will merely follow established tax protocols. How any perceived error in the actions of a tax official, assuming for purposes of arguments, there exists any, can be blamed on the tax payer really beats the imagination. In this particular case, it is unprecedented for a sitting governor to be accused of forgery and fraud in respect of a document he did not make, had no input into its contents and on this contrived and trumped up grounds, invalidated his election.
This is a clear assault on our collective national efforts towards achieving egalitarianism and respect for the will of the people in electing their leaders. Nigerians should be worried.
• Comrade Bonnie Iwuoha is Abia State Commissioner for Information, Culture & Strategy.